Although the 1800s were a glorious time of exploration, with many discoveries happening during this period, they also came at great risk since not every expedition ended well. As such, the fate of two 1845 British expedition ships has been discovered, revealing their end being cannibalism and death.
British Expedition Ships
National Geographic's "Explorer: Lost in the Arctic" aims to solve the mystery of the 19th-century doomed expedition to learn how they died or where the captain's tomb was. As such, the show involved a four-month quest to look for the legendary ship that disappeared in 1846.
The ship's last known location was in the Canadian Arctic and was led by its captain, Sir John Franklin, as it disappeared without a trace. Nat Geo explorer Mark Synnott, the expedition's leader, an experienced rock climber and author, attempted to relive Captain Franklin's experience.
Synott said they tried to sail the same water, cast their anchors in the same bays, experience the same storms, and connect with the lost spirits to understand the expedition better.
Sir Franklin's Expedition
The expedition involved 129 men and two ships sailing from England in 1845. They aimed to become the first expedition to tread through the Northwest Passage. This passage is a known route that passes through the Arctic from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
A note in 1859 discovered that the ships had been trapped in ice in September 1846. The HMS Terror and HMS Erebus disappeared, and for decades, multiple ships have attempted to find possible survivors of the doomed expedition but with no results.
Later research by a Canadian search team in 2014 resulted in the location of the HMS Terror in Victoria Strait, and two years later, they also found the HMS Erebus due to a local Inuit fisher. The latter was discovered off King William Island's coast.
What Happened to the Sailors?
The researchers were able to find that despite some people dying on the ships, 105 men were able to survive on the remaining supplies. In April 1848, they abandoned the wreckage of the ships, and according to Synott, they experienced a different fate.
As such, some experts think that most of the crew died due to starvation, scurvy, and lead poisoning from ingesting food from poorly canned packaging. Other experts also suggest that the real cause of death was tuberculosis, respiratory illness, and cardiovascular disease due to "sick boots" being kept on the ship.
Ultimately, the researchers also think that the sailors who abandoned the ship could've resorted to cannibalism due to the discovery of cracked bones at Booth Point and Erebus Bay. This suggests that some crew members could've tried to suck the marrow from dead comrades to get every bit of food possible.
As for Franklin's tomb, they found it to be located on King William Island, estimating that he died on June 11, 1847, aboard the HMS Erebus.
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